SYNOPSIS: What if everything you learned in school about the
heroes of science, technology and invention was a lie?

What if Tom Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb? What
if the Wright brothers weren’t the first men to fly? What if Marconi didn’t
invent the radio, or Watt the steam engine, or Bell the telephone, or Henry
ford the production line? What if Columbus didn’t really discover America, or
Darwin the concept of evolution, or Watson and Crick the existence of DNA?

Well, brace yourself, because none of these people did
what the history books credit them with having done. Were they all thieves and
liars? Was it all a huge mistake? Was it some gigantic conspiracy? How did all
these people become famous for things they didn’t do?

In fourteen gripping, true stories Daniel Diehl and
Mark P. Donnelly dig deep into the past and lay bare the facts about who really
invented what and why somebody else got the glory.

This is historical fact that reads like the best
fiction – easy to read and impossible to put down.

There is an oft quoted truism that non-fiction writers, like
teachers, collect more information than they can possibly pass on to their
audience. Never was that more the case
than when we started to write our latest release ‘Inventors & Impostors: A
Sordid History of Invention and Imitation’.

When we decided
to write a book about the largely unknown inventors whose names have been
overshadowed by those who followed in their footsteps, we thought it was a
grand, fun idea. We also thought that as
historians with some little experience in the field, the project would be
amazingly easy; a real breeze. Just goes
to show how wrong you can be. Every
piece of research led to another, and that one to yet another, and so on. We simply had no idea how many commonplace
things that we not only take for granted, but assume we know something about
the development of, are actually the result of years, decades and sometimes
centuries of one 'inventor' after another building on, and sometimes blatantly co-opting,
the ideas of other people. Many of the
items that we assumed were either eighteenth or nineteenth century in origin
turned out to stretch back many centuries, in some cases more than two thousand
years. Even more astounding was the
geographic scope of these improbable chains of invention; things which may have
originally been discovered or invented in one nation, only to be lost and
forgotten, would later be rediscovered thousands of miles away in a different
nation and under entirely different circumstances. Just as often, credit for inventions were
simply stolen from their originator by an unscrupulous – and far less qualified
– individual who then claimed credit for another person’s work.

Much of what
you will read in Inventors & Impostors may strike you as astounding, if not
outright unbelievable. Some of the
people we have all been raised to believe were clever, if not brilliant, heroes
of science, invention and discovery were, in fact, little better than
self-promoting pirates. Certainly this
is not true in every instance, but it is often enough the case to undermine our
confidence in much of what we have been taught over the course of our time in
public school.

Consequently,
the information contained in these pages will probably never make it into
textbooks or popular history books, but the same can be said for so much of
life. The truth is often just too
embarrassing to become common knowledge.
Still, as newspaper reporters say when defending their intrusive way of
poking their noses into people's private lives: “the public has a right to
know”.

This book may
cause some controversy, it may raise some readers' ire; and that is not always
a bad thing, at least if it occurs as the result of an honest search for the
truth. But most of all, we hope you
enjoy reading it and, with a little luck, come away with a better understanding
of the way in which many of the modern wonders which we all take for granted
really came into existence.

Dan Diehl &
Mark Donnelly

AUTHOR INFORMATION & LINKS

Daniel Diehl
has been an author, writer and investigative historian for thirty-five years.
For nearly twenty years Diehl has been involved in writing for publication and
documentary television production. Mr. Diehl’s work has won awards from the
Houston (Texas) Film Festival, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
(US) and the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Arts Foundation. Working alone
and as a part of the multi-award winning team of Daniel Diehl and Mark
Donnelly, Diehl has produced work in two main categories; trade publication and
television documentary scripts. His canon of work includes twenty non-fiction
books (which have been translated into ten foreign languages), one previous
work of fiction and scripts for more than one hundred and seventy hours of
documentary television primarily for A&E Network, The History Channel,
History International, Biography Channel and Discovery Network.

Mark P. Donnelly is an
historian, author, screenwriter, duelist, bon vivant, and constant gentleman.
He has authored, co-authored or ghost written over 20 titles in several
countries and has scripted and/or produced nearly 200 hours of historical
television programming. He can frequently be found traveling throughout the
north-eastern US giving lectures and presentations at themed events as well as
teaching historical swordsmanship and western martial arts. He currently
resides in central Pennsylvania where he enjoys life with his wife and family.